Keeping a hard drive well-maintained is essential so that it
continues to operate smoothly and its lifespan isn’t adversely affected.
Contrary to what you might think it really isn’t that difficult to maintain your
hard drive, and you can start by following these simple tips:

Essentially chkdsk is a Windows
utility that will check your hard drive for errors and attempt to fix them. In
particular it can locate and fix bad sectors due to logical errors, as well as
lost clusters, cross-linked files, directory issues, and so on. Ideally you
should run chkdsk from time to time, so that you are aware of the state of your
hard drive and fix whatever issues you can.

There are a number of measures that
you can take to protect your hard drive, such as by using a cooling system to
keep its temperature down, using a surge protector to avoid electrical surges,
and ensuring it is housed securely so that it doesn’t shake. Try to protect
your hard drive in whatever way you can, so that it remains in good condition.

Nowadays there are tools that you
can use to continuously monitor your hard drive and track the number of
read-write processes, its temperature, utilization, and so on. If you feel this
is overkill then you don’t need to use any tools, but can instead periodically
check to make sure your hard drive isn’t too hot, and that it has enough free
space.

Additionally you can track the
amount of bad sectors that are found using chkdsk, to make sure they aren’t
increasing rapidly which could be a sign your hard drive is going to fail
sooner rather than later.

By installing the operating system
on a separate drive, you can isolate it so that the drive isn’t exposed to all
the other read-write operations that are being carried out and that should let
it last longer. Additionally you can then use it for hard
drive recovery – should any of your data hard drives fail.

Keep in mind that even the best
laid plans go astray, and at some point or other your well-maintained hard
drive is still going to fail. As such one important aspect of every hard
drive’s maintenance is to prepare for that eventually and back up any important
data so that it can be restored when the drive does need to be replaced.

If you follow the tips listed above, your hard drives should
be in better condition overall and you may even add a couple of years to their
lifespan. That being said if and when your hard drives do fail, you should also
be prepared and will be able to restore the data that you need without any
issues – which in the long run is far more important than trying to make your
hard drive last longer.